Kids Blast Rosh Hashanah Trumpets

The Jewish High Holiday season will start off with a blast—literally—at sundown Wednesday when believers sound traditional rams’ horn trumpets to signal the start of Rosh Hashanah and awaken spiritual sleepers for a 3-week season that moves from feasting to fasting, and from confession to dancing.

For a rabbi, it can be a bit overwhelming; for a kid it’s a heap of fun.

An intense three weeks

“Imagine having four of the most important moments of your year in a three-week period,” explained of .

The tasty-sweet Rosh Hashanah new year celebration is followed by Yom Kippur, the "Day of Atonement," full of confession and attempts to heal relationships. Next is Sukkot, a “Jewish Thanksgiving” with meals beneath a backyard tent, followed by dancing in and outside the synagogue and the rewinding of the entire Torah scroll.

“We reach an extraordinary level of intensity,” said Latz.

Never moreso, perhaps, than when the trumpet sounds this week, calling the faithful not only to a season of self-reflection, but to enumerating sins and mending broken relationships.

“Thoughout the Rosh Hashanah service you hear 100 shofar (ram’s horn trumpet) blasts total,” said Rabbi Latz. “Some call it a spiritual alarm clock.”

“There are few (religious) symbols that are more evocative, haunting and meaningful than the sound of the shofar,” he said. “Knowing that this has been done for 6,000 years, it resonates inside your gut. You ask, ‘OK, who am I supposed to be, what relationships need forgiveness, and how will I respond?’”

Make your own shofar

“God’s shofar will travel,” said a smiling Rabbi Mordechai Grossbaum of Minneapolis Chabad Center, who brought a box of kosher rams’ horns and power tools to a Heilicher Jewish Day School classroom in St. Louis Park on Thursday.  

Grossbaum’s mission is “to make Judaism come alive,” driving his Shofar Factory-on-wheels daily to kids at eight Metro-wide Jewish schools and synagogues.

“You can push a book in a kid’s face or you can involve him so he enjoys it,” said Grossbaum, as children with hacksaws cut a mouthpiece into the horns.

“I’ve been dying to get to 5^th grade to make my shofar,” said Anthony, treasuring the moment and sanding his horn by himself outside the classroom-turned-workshop, away from the dust cloud, loud power tools and bantering classmates.

“I like music. I play drums in our school band. I think it’s cool how people long ago could make instruments out of rams’ horns,” he noted.

Inside the shop, a burly kid from one pair of boys got the 15-30-minute job of sawing off the tip of the horn to create the mouthpiece. His more slightly built partner cheered when they were the first ones done.

“He’s so strong, he could be the best quarterback in the league,” the young boy exclaimed.

As children finished and the Rabbi drilled, power-sanded, and honed each piece, kids pursed their lips and blew ‘til they were red in the face, as the chorus of sounds grew louder and louder.

“The shofar calls us to the spiritual work of the season,” said Latz. “First, it is to ask, ‘What are the things that have been weighing me down that I need to really let go of so I can get on and be the self that I’m supposed to be?’”

Second, it’s to heal wounded relationships, he said. “We all have brokenness; we’ve all been hurt and have people we have hurt. So we have to both be ready to seek forgiveness in a serious, mature and honest way, and to embrace the opportunity to forgive others. That’s our new year’s resolution. It’s a depth of understanding about our relationships.”